A new social feature, Notifications, has also launched in the U.S., alerting people to social conversations and activity across Yahoo!. The extension of these features is designed to bring a deeply personalized, social news experience to more of the content millions of people come to Yahoo! to read each day.

Since launching the Yahoo! News friends’ activity feature, more than 12 million people have opted in, increasing referrals from Facebook to Yahoo! News and bringing a younger (ages 18—34) audience of socially engaged people1 to the No. 1 online news destination.2

“As the world’s most popular online news destination, Yahoo! News delivers the most compelling content on the Web through a combination of local editors, advanced technologies, and now, your friends,” said Blake Irving, chief product officer, Yahoo!. “In just three months, we’ve seen traffic from Facebook to Yahoo! News in the U.S. increase by 300%, so we’re excited to extend this social activation to more of our worldwide content sites.”

The extension of the news activity feature to more Yahoo! sites around the world lets people discover and connect around the news, entertainment, and information they are enjoying on Yahoo! through updates on Facebook. A straightforward opt-in process launches people into the immersive social experience:

Control What You Share — By opting-in to the new feature, people can easily show what they’re reading on Yahoo! with their Facebook friends. People’s activity will be featured on their Facebook profiles as it happens. It’s easy to turn it on and off and delete items. View Your Friends’ Activity — A new “facebar” at the top of integrated Yahoo! pages shows a person’s Facebook friends and what they’re reading on Yahoo!. Notifications across Yahoo! (U.S. only)

A new social feature, Notifications, builds upon the Yahoo! News friends’ activity feature and further encourages social discovery and navigation of content through the lens of people’s friends. The Notifications feature alerts people to social conversations and other activity on Yahoo! that interest them such as feedback on reviews, responses to comments, and stock alerts. Notifications is found on the top of most pages on Yahoo!, such as Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, omg!, Shine, and Yahoo! Travel.